


Scraps

by Gryphonrhi



Category: Highlander (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Horror, Okay really Short & Not So Sweet, Short & Sweet, Spook Me Multi-Fandom Halloween Ficathon, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-26
Updated: 2013-10-26
Packaged: 2017-12-30 12:23:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1018567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gryphonrhi/pseuds/Gryphonrhi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the werewolves told their children about the monster in the woods, he was that monster.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scraps

She launched from the shelf of rock into the night, barely noticing the cuts on her paws that split wider against the rippling stone. The air held her for a brief moment, moonlight pouring comfort against charcoal-dappled fur.

Then she fell into water so cold that it burned along the gashes in her flanks. She resurfaced with an explosion of exhaled air and scrabbling paws, fur already matting along her skin, the fragile edges of her ears aching as the water froze in the exposed air. She shook her head violently to shed the ice crystallizing in her ears and nose; the blood had already been washed away. 

All of that was much less important than the feel of the current sweeping her downstream faster than she could run. The water didn't leave tracks for the Hunter, either. 

Her eyes were slitted against the cold, her forelegs out to brace her off any debris in the river, and she listened for more splashes, but she heard nothing. The wind stilled momentarily; when it did, the only sound was that of water pouring over rocks and branches. Nothing moved in the forest, a silent warning that large predators prowled somewhere near. Any other night, she would have been one of the dangers in the night, not listening for sharper claws and stronger arms.

Part of her wanted to hear sounds or splashes. She hadn't heard Radu's howl in what felt like forever and hadn't been a quarter of the night. More of her was terrified that she would hear a huge splash that meant the Night Hunter was still after her.

A moan drifted up. It took a moment for her to identify it as trees rubbing against each other in the rising wind. She smelled a frightened fox, heard a rabbit bolt away from the scent of wet wolf, winced as fire cracked down from heaven and rocks rolled in the sky a few moments later. The air started to smell of sky-fire and cold winds, of rain piling up to pour over them and make the stream run faster, higher, and more dangerous.

When she'd finally drifted so far that the territory began to smell unfamiliar, she scrabbled her way out of the water and up onto the bank. The cold was starting to sink into her muscles and bones. Water streamed out of her fur as she staggered up the pine needle-covered rocks and mud, her paws so numb she couldn't feel where she was stepping. Ice cracked and fell off her shoulders as she did, letting her fur lift a little to trap air as cold as she was. 

After a moment, she smelled fresh blood, her own, and whimpered.

She had to be leaving bloody pawprints. If the Hunter came this far, he would find her trail again, but going back into the icy water would be death. The moon was sliding down the sky, slipping away from full. Soon she would be on two legs again, without fur to keep her warm, paws to soak up the impact of the rocks, or a nose that could smell him coming.

She pushed herself into a trot that had more to do with lifted paws than speed, but as she warmed up, she sped up. Slowly, so slowly she wondered if this was how the elders felt when they tottered into the morning sun to sun their bones, the numbness crept away. Then she ached from ear-tips to tail-tip, and she was so hungry she would have eaten a skunk or ferret whole if she'd smelled one to hunt.

All she smelled was one of the owls with wings wider than her body as it flew past her, headed towards the water; she knew better than to take on those deadly talons. Around her, the forest was beginning to wake with the sleepy chitter, chirp, and squeak of approaching dawn.

Still she ran, ran towards the ebbing moon and towards new scents and territory. Behind her, somewhere, ran the Hunter of Night, the Slayer of Wolves, the Child Who Grew Steel Not Fur.

The oldest tales of the wolves all said the Hunter had been thrown in the pit with their ancestors and the human children who'd lived along the sea. He'd been human, they'd all thought, hurled in like the other children to scrabble for food against the wolves. (That tribe had no dogs, no matter what the humans said.) Like them all -- all of the ones who survived, anyway -- he'd come out bloody and bitten, half-starved and half-feral.

He hadn't come out a wolf-changer, as so many of the tribe had. He hadn't left with the cubs either, to run on four paws and two feet, as so many of the wolves had. And yet… he had always been something more, after that. Tougher, harder to kill, with more of a taste for blood and meat. 

One of the cubs had come back to the tribe equally hard, equally tough, and more fond of the cooked meat and distilled drinks of the humans.

All might have been well, the tales said, had Sabina not died in a clash of wolf tribes that began on paws in the full moon and ended in arrows at the new. After her blood soaked a ravine, the Night Hunter claimed his first prey, scattering parts and paws across a meadow lit by the full moon.

They never knew when he would come back, never knew how many he would kill before he was happy this time, or how many the Elders would have to send—

\- - -

She never saw the sword that took her head off her shoulders, leaving the rest of her body to tumble forward in a spray of blood and thumps of uncoordinated limbs.

The Kurgan watched her body collapse, watched the blood pour out, first steaming and then freezing, and waited until the moon finally set.

In the first pale sunlight, she shifted slowly back from wolf to woman. The boy had been no challenge, but this one had come as close to escaping as he'd seen in a few decades. 

"Too bad it's never good enough," he rumbled, cleaning his sword with her black hair before sheathing it.

He turned and left her as she'd fallen, let her blank eyes stare up at the sun and the crows that would be there soon enough. She'd sated his lust to hunt these wolves, shed her blood to restore his love for these chases. Time now to stalk those like him, the men who were more than men. And more dangerous, some of them, than weres.

He'd heard rumors that Tak-Ne was in Spain again. This time, he would take more than just the bastard's sword or his life. 

This time, he would destroy him.

_~ ~ ~ finis ~ ~ ~_

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Spook_Me 2013, for a prompt of werewolves, because of something Ramirez said in the movie. Supposedly, the Kurgans were known to "toss children into pits full of starved dogs, and watch them fight for [the] meat." It's really not far from starved dogs to starved werewolves.
> 
> I don't know if the werewolves' legends are right; I don't know if the Elders really sent the wolves out to be run down so the Kurgan would have his blood and leave. You'll have to decide those for yourself.
> 
> Tak-Ne was the earliest name of Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez. And reading this, I have to wonder if House of Wolves was a snipe at the Kurgan, too.
> 
> The summary is adapted from part of Methos' soliloquy at the Jimmy, of course. But it did fit.
> 
> Beta by Devo and Samjohnsson; mistakes, of course, by me. I'll fix them if you tell me about them, and thank you!


End file.
